I'd Blog More, But Doctor Who Is On…

love

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of diversity in all its glorious splendor, consciously and unconsciously making sure that I don’t recognize the ugliness of bigotry if I can help it. As a lover of fairness and equality, I’ve made it my business to routinely champion for a future that strives against racial disharmony. Maybe it was something my dad taught me.

Immediately after I got a lecture from my mother on the importance of marrying black, dad pulled me aside and educated me on the “100% Rule.” He counted on one hand, saying there’s Red, Black, Yellow, Brown and Other, representing the color ratio of girls across the planet. (I assume “Brown” included South Asians) And my mom had just urged me to shoot for 20%. Well, dad said I shouldn’t reach for 20%f of anything. It’s 100% of everything, or nothing. Looks like modern television is taking dad’s advice. Let’s look at how things are going on the boob tube.Continue reading

Whenever I think of the 100 Years War, I feel bad that they didn’t consider this idea first. Because being happy is a crapload better than dying.

The 100 Days OF Happiness Project is a challenge – kind of like The Cinnamon Challenge – just done 99 consecutive times and you substitute the pain and suffering with a warm and cozy feeling. Now, in a perfect world, you could go all Marquis De Sade and throw in an extra 20 days for good measure (as one could debate that sodomy was his “happy” place.) Furthermore, why not shoot for a lifetime of happiness? (see Hugh Hefner). Well let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. 100 days is a damn good start.

On paper it’s an easy effort: You sign up at 100Happydays.com and once a day you find something that makes you happy – then post a picture of it via whatever you’ve got (Instagram, Twitter, etc.) with the hashtag #100happydays. I’m doing mine STARTING TODAY via My Instagram Account and everyone is invited to come by and check it out or play along with me. I’d love to follow your progress!

And just for kicks, I’ll post my first entry here:

What you see there are two of three birthday balloons in my bedroom, recently given to me at a party my family threw for my 41st day of life. I was really touched by it so I have them floating on the ceiling so that they’re the first things I see when I wake up.

Tomorrow I’ll find something different, hopefully, because the challenge is, you gotta do it every single day for 100 days. Hence the name, duh.

So, off I go! Here’s to me not screwing it up because I forgot to take a photo and post it on the internet!

The last thing I ever wanted to do was write a blog with such a pretentious title as this one. But a recent viewing of “Frasier” sparked a memory I’ve chosen to share about my ex-wife.

It’s the one about Frasier’s ex-wife Lilith visiting him in Seattle for reconciliation long after they’d broken up in Boston. Good show, and the first time I’d watched it eons ago, I probably just laughed. This time, I identified.

Here is a story about something meaningless. Perhaps you’ve heard it before.

One upon a time, I had an extremely popular blog going on Myspace…a once extremely popular site. My name was “The Gringo Gentile” – random words I strung together much as I did with the equally ridiculous “Fate Jacket X.”

Nonetheless, the fun I had posting twice a week or so was enriching and provided me with my fix to create, to write, to socialize, to share. I took it seriously because, as a writer, it needed to happen. Screenplays and Yelp reviews weren’t enough and committing to a novel would’ve been to wage war on my ADD. And since Harper’s and Salon kept friendzoning my short stories, blogging won.

Then blogging lost. As I’m newly returned to the blog-o-sphere, I don’t know what to expect, but back in 2007, it was a sexy place. Female bloggers and commenters who liked me (without ever meeting me in person) didn’t hesitate to splash my page with sexual innuendo. The lurkers would send messages filled with flat-out perversion. And a topless photo or phone number request was normal for the inbox. After awhile, I’d just accepted it as the culture while not really entertaining it. You see, I was madly in love with my wife.

But after months of seething over flirty online comments, she’d grown jealous and could no longer bottle the rage. I knew how she was shortly after we started dating, but grew to love her and that was that. In fact, the things those online ladies liked about me were the very same traits that lured my wife. I felt it unreasonable that she could think that those few personality wins would simply cap around anyone but herself. Yes, there it was – the ultimatum: the blog or the wife.

She won; she beat the blog. And then six years later, the bitch left me. But that’s a different story.

Sure, I missed writing and I missed those connections, some of which I’d renew through Facebook. All of a sudden KittieVicious was Renee’. The Fearless Ferret was just…Doug. It was strange knowing these nutcase blog-folk as real people composing themselves across FB’s vast landscape of accountability. In fact, if someone I knew from the old days tried to add me with a pseudonym, I refused.

Over time I’d be told stories. About Daryl-Ain’t-Right ruining his marriage because he banged Sweet Jess. Another story about C.B.K. traveling 780 miles to fuck JustJen and then she tried to kill him because he wouldn’t leave his wife. One story after another about Myspace bloggers fucking the shit out of each other and burning over it. Those gals must’ve thought I was an oddball prude! How DARE I refuse to send penis pics?? Hmmm…I thought maybe my wife was right to be apprehensive.

But she was wrong. I got no credit for being that oddball prude. Nurse Becky and Vic Vodka having a 3-way in Vegas with xXxDanellaxXx had nothing to do with me. The writer has to write! Simple as that. Never again will I let anyone get in the way of my expression. And, so I’m back. Back with two middle fingers raised high, thinking out loud over the Web, arrogantly convinced that people give a shit about what I have to say. But it doesn’t matter either way…as long as we can get our fix without killjoys fucking up the buzz, it’s all good.

p.s. – I should note that I’m nolonger friends with like 80% of those Myspace refugees. Turned out they’re all insane. Yes, internet people are batshit crazy. 0.O

I’ve been banging out tons of television lately – partly because I’ve yet to find a job at my relocation – partly because I love television. And as one who loves dating the rainbow even more, I’ve taken notice of the many mixed-race couples on TV and in film and print. From Moses’ nameless Ethiopian wife to Troy and Britta on “Community,” love has proven itself more powerful than ignorance since the early days of running from Egyptians. And no two would be more groundbreaking in that display than Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball.

Thanks to Ball’s insistence that the network cast Arnez, her real life husband, as her spouse on the show, we have our most pioneering integrated on-screen couple. And then the steamroller…

“Good thing you were here. This cab would’ve NEVER stopped for me alone.”

“Matt and Christina Drayton are a couple whose attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.” ~ IMDB. That’s the breakdown for “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” as in “there goes the neighborhood!” This is an important film in all its hammy preachiness and it shocked 1967 audiences to see such a hard topic get attacked so fearlessly. Great performances all around, during the spike in Sidney Poitier’s career.

Only TRUE bff’s rock secret handshakes.

“Star Trek” had no peer when it came to giving hope for a more tolerant future. Sure, Kirk and Uhura had the first white/black television kiss and God knows Kirk was no stranger to chasing alien tail. But on the subject of love, Spock’s parents Sarek and Perrin gave us something else entirely: the first inter-species couple. Thanks to television’s most famous Vulcan/Human pairing, creator Gene Roddenberry was able to show us that our hangups over taboo “race mixing” couldn’t have been more ridiculous.

I got nothing…

But since we humans are still too barbaric to even fathom such things, let’s get back to something we can almost deal with. Probably television’s funniest black and white couple was Tom and Helen Willis of “The Jeffersons.” All through the 70’s and early 80’s these two played foils to racist comedy, courtesy of Mr. George Jefferson. Yet, none of it was mean-spirited. In fact, Mr. Jefferson and his two “frenemies” showed us that this was a topic that didn’t have to be taken so seriously after all.

“Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs!” ~ Iago, Othello

Hundreds of years after Miriam and Aaron hated on Moses’ black wife, William Shakespeare’s Iago wanted war hero Othello D.E.A.D. in one of the bard’s most powerful tragedies. It’s not just a sad story of insecurity and betrayal, it’ s an interesting window into an era we simply don’t know enough about. But we do know that interracial couples either widely existed or were on people’s minds. And moreso thanks to Shakespeare’s brave writing.

Please…no “white wife-beater” jokes.

As a former comic book collector (shocker, yes) and full-time cartoon lover, I’ve come across some awesomely artful examples of interracial love. Iceman and Opal taught me was falafel was. Power Man and Iron Fist’s Luke Cage and Danny Rand were tag-team champions of colorful loving with their gf’s Misty Knight and Jessica Jones. And Green Lantern Jon Stewart’s dating Hawkgirl came to mainstream audiences via the amazing Justice League cartoons. Thank goodness the younger generations are being exposed to such beauty.

He must not get many “come hither” looks.

On a side note, The Vision and Scarlet Witch even went so far as to express human/android relationships as a thing of wholesome innocence – a subject Star Trek: TNG even touched on a couple times. Hey whatever floats your boat!

INTERGALACTIC ORGY TIME!!

But when it comes to a full on, balls out, go-for-broke display of love, sex and zero judgments, Britain’s “Torchwood” wins hands down. Not only do we get the incomparable Captain Jack Harkess – a man who will screw ANYTHING hot, but almost every character on the show has either experienced interracial relationships, homosexual encounters, cyborg love, alien banging, everything you can think of. All sentient beings are equal on this show and that’s why I love it so.

“Hey gurrrl. Your world or mine?”

Yet “Torchwood” was the spawn of something bigger. It’s the progeny of the “Dr. Who” universe, one of the most important creations of all time. Spanning fifty years as I write this, and running the gamut of television, radio plays, and print media, this is an unstoppable thing of epic power. And the show has used this clout to depict an existence where not only do interracial couples prosper, but they are commanding relationships throughout the modern series. One duo goes even farther with their lesbian union by hailing from different planets!

Is there a Doctor in the house?

God bless Doctor Who for showing us a world (or worlds) where it absolutely does not matter what color you are as long as you practice that one blissfully incredible, achingly beautiful, sweetly perfect emotion called “Love.”

Honorabe mention: That adorable Cheerios commercial that features a mixed race family doing not a damn thing but being awesome.